Preach No More

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  “All I want at the moment,” Shapiro said, “is the name of whoever is occupying Room Nine-twelve.”

  The desk clerk looked doubtful. When he spoke it was with doubt in his voice. But what he said was, “Well, I guess so, Lieutenant.”

  He turned to another rack and flipped cards in it. He came back to Shapiro. He said, “A Miss Lacey, Lieutenant. Miss Jo-An Lacey.”

  “Joan?”

  “Two words, the way it’s registered. ‘Jo’ dash ‘An.’ She’s been with us for some weeks, Lieutenant. About a month, actually. Sir?”

  The inquiring “Sir?” was not addressed to Nathan Shapiro. It was for a tall, youngish man with a neatly clipped but very thick red beard. It was followed by, “Can I help you?”

  “Will you have Miss Lacey paged?” the red beard said. “Miss Jo-An Lacey? She doesn’t seem to be in her room and I’ve looked in the Oak Room and the Rose Room and—anyway, we’ve got a lunch date. Perhaps she left a message?”

  “I don’t think so,” the clerk said. “Who would the message be for?”

  “Shepley. Laurence Shepley.”

  The tall desk clerk made a business of looking through a shelf under the desk. He stood up and shook his head. He said, “I’m afraid not, Mr. Shepley. Held up in traffic, probably. But I’ll have her paged.” Then he looked at Nathan Shapiro.

  “We seem,” Nathan said, “to be looking for the same person, Mr. Shepley. A friend of yours, this Miss Lacey?”

  “Business of yours?” the man with the red beard said.

  Nathan Shapiro reached for and picked up his badge. He cupped it in his hand and showed it to Laurence Shepley. Shepley looked at the badge. He said, “I don’t get it, Lieutenant. Looking for Jo-An?”

  “She is a friend of yours, then?”

  “I know her. You don’t read much, do you?”

  Shapiro let surprise and bewilderment show in his long face. Then he said, “A reasonable amount. Why?”

  “Her name doesn’t ring a bell?”

  Nathan Shapiro said he was afraid it didn’t.

  “Couple of years ago, three maybe, she wrote one hell of a novel. Called it Snake Country. A hell of a novel and a hell of a best seller. The movie wasn’t so hot. Still no bell, Lieutenant?”

  “No bell,” Shapiro said. There was no point in saying that there was a tinkle. Not the sharp tinkle of the bell on the hotel desk. The clerk said, “Leon. Page Miss Lacey. Miss Jo-An Lacey for this gentleman.” He indicated the man with the red beard. And Shepley said, “Maybe you’d better forget it, Mr. Arthur.”

  “Yes,” Nathan Shapiro said. “I’m afraid she won’t answer, Mr. Shepley. Suppose we sit down somewhere and you can tell me what you know about Miss Lacey.”

  Shepley said, “I don’t see—” and then, “Oh, all right.” He walked into the lounge, which now was almost full. But people were getting up from chairs and sofas and greeting people who came in and then going with them into the restaurant. Shepley found a small table with a chair on either side of it. There was a bell on the table and Shepley tapped it. When nothing happened immediately he tapped it again, several times. A waiter appeared. He said, “Gentlemen?”

  “Bourbon and plain water,” Shepley said. “Old Crow if you’ve got it. Yours, Lieutenant?”

  Shapiro hesitated for a moment, not especially because he was on duty. His stomach objects to spirits. “Sherry,” Nathan Shapiro said. “Not too dry.” The waiter said, “Gentlemen,” and went away.

  “About Miss Lacey?” Shapiro said.

  “Suppose you tell me,” Shepley said. “What’s Jo-An got to do with the police? She’s a damn sweet person, and if you’re going to say you’re after her for—”

  “No,” Shapiro said. “Not in the sense you mean. Have you known her long, Mr. Shepley?”

  “Not very. Three weeks or so. We met at a shindig some publisher was throwing. We ran into each other and we were both bored as hell and—well, we went somewhere where we weren’t bored. You may as well tell me, don’t you think? Where the police come into whatever the police do come into.”

  Shapiro thought a moment. Then he said, “A young woman committed suicide down in the Village yesterday. Or the night before. Or, perhaps she didn’t kill herself. In an apartment in Gay Street. She was, she’d told people, a Miss Jones. We’re by no means certain yet, but there was a room key in her apartment. It was for Room Nine-twelve in this hotel. Miss Lacey is booked into that room. She’s not in it now. Anyway, she’s not answering her telephone. As you found out, too. We’d—say we’d like to talk to her.”

  The waiter brought their drinks. Shepley merely stared at his. Then he said, “Jesus!” He picked his glass up and put it down again without drinking from it. He looked hard across the table at Shapiro.

  “As I said,” Shapiro told him, “we want to talk to Miss Lacey. Ask her how her door key happened to be in this Gay Street place.”

  “That isn’t really it, is it?” Shepley said. He picked up his glass and this time drank from it. He put it down on the table. He put it down hard. When he spoke, he spoke slowly, heavily.

  “What you’re getting at,” Shepley said, “you think Jo-An was this Miss Jones. And that she’s dead. That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

  “We think it’s possible,” Shapiro said. “How well did you get to know Miss Lacey, Mr. Shepley? After this meeting at the party?”

  “Not all that well,” Shepley said. “I took her to dinner a couple of times. We had drinks at my place once. We—oh, we talked a lot. We were in the same—well, we both called it trade. We talked about that. I don’t mean we were in the same class at it. Damn near nobody has ever heard of Laurence Shepley. Damn near everybody had heard of her. A ‘New Voice from the South.’ That sort of—well, that sort of crap. But all the same, she was good. A couple of early tries. Then Snake Country and—wham!”

  “You talked about her work? And yours?”

  “I told her Snake Country was damn good. Which she knew without my telling her. She’d never heard of anything I’ve done—a few short stories, but that market’s pretty well dried up. Articles. Anything that will make a buck. You see, Lieutenant, I’m a pro. Getting by. She—well, she was a pro too. Only—I keep using the past tense about her. You think that’s the right tense, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Shepley.”

  “You think probably.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  “It’ll be a damn shame if you’re right. Because she was just finishing another book and thought it was going to be better than the snake-country thing.”

  “You and she just—oh, had drinks together? And dinners together? And talked.”

  “If you mean did we sleep together, hell, no. That didn’t come into it. All right, I was a man and she was a woman and—well, a damn good-looking woman. But I’ve got a regular girl. We—Jo-An and I—we’re just a couple of people in the same line of work. She way up and I just scrambling along. But the same line of work, all the same. We—well, we got sort of fond of each other in a mild sort of way. She was pretty much alone up here. Wanted somebody to talk to. Things happen that way, you know.”

  “Yes. You say ‘voice from the South.’ Where in the South, do you know?”

  “Mobile, Alabama. Somewhere around Mobile, anyway. She talked like it, although not all that much like it.”

  “You say she’s good-looking. Can you describe her to me?”

  “Not the sort of thing I’m good at, Lieutenant. When I write fiction, which I don’t often any more, I don’t go into physical descriptions much. Give an outline. Let the readers fill it in. When there turn out to be readers, that is. Jo-An—oh, about five feet five. Brown hair to her shoulders. Brown eyes. Good figure. Rather high-pitched voice, like lots of Southern women. She dressed well. God knows she ought to have been able to, even with the lousy deal she got.”

  “Lousy deal?”

  “Look, I said she was a pro. But all the same, she didn’t really know her w
ay around. We talked about that sort of thing, of course. It’s a thing writers do talk about. Oh, a little about how you get your effects. But mostly about what you get out of them.” He rubbed together the tips of the fingers of his right hand. He said, “Get what I mean, Lieutenant?”

  “I guess so. This lousy deal?”

  “You know anything about writers—writers and publishers and things like that?”

  “Not much,” Shapiro said, in a discouraged voice. He is always getting involved in matters of which he knows nothing. With painters and religious zealots and people of the theater—all things of which he knows nothing. He sighed and sipped from his glass of sherry. In spite of what he had asked for, it was dry. His stomach wouldn’t approve.

  “When she signed the contract for this first book of hers,” Shepley said. “Years ago, that was. When she was just a kid. She signed the form the publisher gave her. The kind, years ago, most publishers just handed out. Straight ten per cent all the way through, believe it or not. Publisher got half of all subsidiary rights when he didn’t get seventy-five. And an option on her next two on the same terms. The same terms, for God’s sake!”

  He drank deeply from his glass, almost finishing it. He shook his head. He said, again, “For God’s sake.”

  Shapiro said, “Those aren’t good terms, Mr. Shepley?”

  Shepley looked across the table at him. He shook his head again. When he spoke again he spoke slowly and quietly, suiting his tone and words to the innocent.

  “The sort of contract publishers don’t try to get away with any more,” he said. “Oh, the good ones never did. You know writers get royalties on their books, don’t you? On the retail price, in most cases. Sometimes on the price the publisher gets from retailers and wholesale houses. But that’s not the usual way. A book sells for—oh, five ninety-five, maybe, at the book store. At ten per cent, the writer gets fifty-nine and a half cents a book.”

  “I can,” Shapiro said, “figure percentages.”

  “Some of the kids can’t,” Shepley said. “Kids like Jo-An was when she signed that first contract. So damn surprised and delighted to get publication they don’t even read the large print. They just say ‘Goody goody’ and sign on the dotted line. The kids without agents, and it’s damn near as hard to get a good agent to handle your stuff as it is to get a publisher to buy it cold. Has this got anything to do with somebody’s getting killed?”

  “I don’t know that it has. I guess it hasn’t. However—Miss Lacey didn’t have an agent, I gather. And an agent would have got her better terms.”

  “She never had had, she told me. And any decent agent sure as hell would. Hell, I know one man who gets seventeen and a half after ten. Damn near everybody gets a break after twenty-five hundred copies. And another after five thousand. A break up, I mean. To twelve and a half first time; maybe to fifteen second time. See what I mean?”

  “I guess so,” Shapiro said. And he thought he was wasting time.

  “And half the movie money,” Shepley said. There was bitterness in his voice. He finished his drink. “Which in her case came to one hell of a lot. And, you won’t believe this, she didn’t even get an advance on any of the books. Not one Goddamn cent.”

  He banged the bell again. This time the waiter came almost at once. Shepley said, “You?” to Nathan Shapiro and Shapiro said, “No.” Shepley said, “Old Crow and plain water,” to the waiter, who said, “Yes, sir,” and went away.

  “The only thing those people didn’t get,” Shepley said, “was an option in perpetuity on the same terms. I don’t know how they missed that one. It’s been done. Karn’s option expired with Snake. So I got her to promise to go to Phil Morton before she signed anything else.”

  “Karn? Morton?”

  “Oscar Karn, Incorporated. Phil Morton—Phillips Morton, Incorporated—is an agent. Mine, as a matter of fact. He’d grab her. Maybe—maybe he already has. She said—when we made this lunch date—she had a lot to tell me. And he’s one of the best. Get her a straight fifteen, at the least. Maybe do better. And no split on the movie money. That’s drying up too, but there’s still some around.”

  The waiter brought a glass with whisky in it and ice and a small pitcher of water. Shepley said, “Thanks,” and pushed a ten-dollar bill on the table. The waiter said, “Thank you, sir,” and went away with the ten-dollar bill.

  “She told you all about this in those conversations you had,” Shapiro said. “About her contract, I mean.”

  “Yes,” Shepley said, and all at once he smiled through his red beard. “What did you think writers talk about when they get together? The art of fiction?”

  Shapiro said he wouldn’t know.

  Mackenowitz’s studio was in West Twelfth Street, beyond Eighth Avenue toward the river. It was an easy enough walk on a pleasant early summer day. The wind was from the southwest, which probably meant that by tomorrow the air would thicken. But this was today, and one could still breathe the air. Tony walked northwest on West Fourth Street. Of course, Rachel might have finished the stint and put her clothes on and gone on to lunch or to the next job. On the other hand, it was conceivable that she hadn’t gone to lunch yet and that he could take her. He’d have to have lunch anyway.

  He turned left into West Twelfth, not hurrying—feeling good and thinking of Rachel Farmer. The building he lived in was near Eighth Avenue, and as he approached it he saw a Negro woman going heavily up the steps which led to the front door. Even from a little distance there was something vaguely familiar about her. She was opening the door to the vestibule when he came to the foot of the stairs. He still wasn’t sure, but he said, “Mrs. Jenkinson?” and she turned and faced him.

  “You’re that cop,” she said. “What you following me for, man?”

  “I’m a cop,” Tony Cook said. “I’m not following you.”

  She said, “So all right,” and pulled the door open.

  “It’s where I live,” Tony said. “It happens I was just passing by, but it’s where I live. You weren’t coming to see me? About Miss Jones or anything?”

  “What would I be coming to see you about?” she said. “I told you and those other policemen all I know about Miss Jones—the poor thing. I’m just going up to do the gentleman’s place, like I’ve been doing once a week.”

  Tony lives on the second floor of the house in West Twelfth. A couple lives on the floor above. Tony said, “That would be Mr. Shepley?”

  “It sure would, man. You got any objections?”

  Her voice was tired. Probably, Tony thought, she was tired all over. She’d come down early by subway from Harlem; she had found a woman dead in a bathtub. Which didn’t mean she didn’t still have to clean for the others she cleaned for on Friday. And probably on Saturday too.

  “Why would I have?” Tony said. “Go on up, Mrs. Jenkinson. And take it easy.”

  The last sentence sounded pretty ridiculous as he said it. It apparently sounded equally ridiculous to Mrs. Jenkinson.

  “Take it easy, the man says,” she said, with tired contempt in her voice. She went on into the vestibule. Tony saw her press a bell button and listened for the click of the released inner door lock. He didn’t hear it. Mrs. Jenkinson reached into her handbag and got a key out and used it and went into the building. She’d have three steep flights of stairs to climb before she could get to work, Tony thought, and walked on west through the pleasant early summer day.

  It was only a coincidence, Tony thought, as he waited for the lights to change at Eighth Avenue. And it wasn’t much of one. Every Tuesday a woman came down from Harlem to do his own apartment, and she could give him only an hour before she had four more to do for in the neighborhood. A friend of his had given him the woman’s name, and she was regular and cleaned well enough. And, of course, she had her key to the outer door and to his apartment.

  The light changed, and he crossed Eighth Avenue and walked on west.

  Of course, the way you usually got hold of cleaning women was through somebo
dy who already had one with a little time to spare. It was just a coincidence that Mrs. Jenkinson, who had worked for Miss Jones in Gay Street, also worked for Mr. Shepley in West Twelfth—Mr. Shepley with the groomed red beard. Probably Mrs. Jenkinson worked for a dozen people in Greenwich Village. Any one of them could have told her that Shepley needed a cleaning woman. Or that Miss Jones did. Tony found that he was, in his mind, putting “Miss Jones” in quotation marks. Which was making an assumption. A lot of people are named Jones.

  He came to a tall, narrow building near Hudson Street. It had the appearance of a loft building. He checked in the tiny, grimy lobby. Ivan Mackenowitz was on the fifth floor. He climbed stairs and when he came to the top of them knocked on a door. A man’s voice, very gruff and loud, answered his knocking. The man said, “I don’t want anything.”

  Tony pushed at the door and it opened. He looked into a large bright room with a skylight. Rachel was standing on what appeared to be a low platform. She wasn’t wearing anything. A man who seemed to be much smaller than his voice was standing facing her, at an easel. When he turned to face Tony he said, “What the hell do you want?”

  “It’s all right, Ivan,” Rachel Farmer said. “He’s a friend of mine. Hi, Tony. What do you want?”

  “We’re working,” Ivan Mackenowitz said. “Can’t you see we’re working, whoever you are?”

  Anthony Cook said who he was and that he wanted a word with Miss Farmer.

  Rachel came down off the platform and sat in a chair in front of canvases stacked against the wall.

  “And put a robe on,” Ivan Mackenowitz told her.

  She said, “Oh, all right,” in a tone of tolerance for the idiosyncrasies of others, and went across the room and picked a robe off another chair and put it on. She went back to the first chair and sat on it again. She said, “What about, Tony?”

  “This woman you saw typing at that window,” Tony said. “The one you told me about. She’s dead, Rachel. We think somebody killed her.”

  Rachel Farmer said, “Oh. Oh, no, Tony.” He saw her throat move as she swallowed. She said, “But she seemed to be working so hard. Bent down over the typewriter and working so hard.”